The In & Out: A history of the Naval and Military Club

CHAPTER 1

TEMPTATIONS OF LONDON

THE VICTORIAN CLUB 1862–1901

The Rally, Balaclava hangs on a wall of the Great Stair in the Club. It depicts a scene from the Crimean War, in which British cavalrymen rallied after suffering terrible losses during the Charge of the Light Brigade in 1854. It was painted in 1879 by Thomas Jones Barker (1815–82), a celebrated painter of military scenes including the famous The Relief of Lucknow.

Victorian caricature of an infantry subaltern surrounded by women. Service clubs were devised to keep such gentlemen out of trouble when they visited the capital, but they did not always succeed… (Peter Newark’s Pictures)

The temptations of London have always been rich and various—and never more so than to a red-blooded, red-jacketed soldier. Even the genteel Jane Austen had noted the impact of a uniform on young women. In Pride and Prejudice, published in 1813, she described the appeal of military men for her young female characters: ‘Their eyes were immediately wandering up in the street in quest of the officers, and nothing else than a very smart bonnet indeed, or a really new muslin in a shop window, could recall them.’

Towards the end of the wars against Napoleon, following famous victories at Trafalgar and in the Peninsular War, the reputation of the British Army and Navy had risen to new heights and the British nation was very proud of its boys in uniform—but what were they do when they came to the capital on leave? They could blow off some steam in taverns and coffee houses, but this could quickly lead to gambling, womanising and fighting, and some senior military men thought now was the time to capitalise on the improving reputation of their armed forces and provide a civilised place of association for them that would—hopefully—possess a more elevated atmosphere.

General Sir Thomas Graham was a veteran of the Peninsular War and had won the respect of his commander, the Duke of Wellington, for his prominent role in the battle of Vitoria and the siege of San Sebastian. Made Baron Lynedoch in 1814, the 66-year-old Scotsman retired from military life bestowed with many honours, but the following year he took up a new campaign. In May 1815 Lynedoch wrote:

The want of a General Military Club, permanently established in London, and possessed of a suitable house appropriated solely to its use, has been generally felt by officers of all ranks of the Army; the advantages of such an institution are almost too obvious to require enumeration.

It must materially contribute to the comfort and respectability of officers of every rank, to have a place of meeting where they can enjoy intercourse with economy, where they can cultivate acquaintance formed on service, and where officers of different ranks can have frequent opportunities of knowing each other, where a good collection of books and maps will always be available ready for the use of members, and where officers may meet in the most creditable manner, and on moderate terms.

An early supporter of such a club was the Duke of Wellington, who took time out from his final campaign against Napoleon to respond to his old comrade’s entreaty. On 13 June 1815 in Brussels, the Duke wrote: ‘I shall be very happy to belong to the military club proposed to be established, in which will, of course, be included the Peninsula Club, respecting which we before corresponded.’ He then added: ‘We have reports of Buonaparte’s joining the army and attacking us.’ Five days later, he led his troops to victory at Waterloo.

Clubs in St James’s and the West End—such as White’s, Boodle’s and Brooks’s—up to this point had been mainly the preserve of aristocratic members, in from the country, who indulged themselves in all manner of ways, with their greatest notoriety reserved for wagering fortunes on the turn of a card. The need for a more respectable club to house Guards officers had already been discussed with the Prince Regent. This bore fruit with the establishment of the Guards Club in 1810 with its first premises in St James’s Street. Unlike its neighbouring clubs, which were proprietary clubs deriving their income mainly from gambling, the Guards Club was funded by a subscription of £5 per year paid by its members.

General Sir Thomas Graham, Baron Lynedoch, a distinguished commander of the Peninsular War. It was Lynedoch who originated the idea of a ‘General Military Club’ in 1815, which evolved into the United Service Club. The popularity of ‘the Senior’ encouraged the establishment of other naval and military clubs. (Peter Newark’s Pictures)

The Guards Club was ‘conducted upon a military system,’ recollected Captain Rees Howell Gronow. ‘Billiards and low whist were the only games indulged in. The dinner was, perhaps, better than at most clubs and considerably cheaper. I had the honour of being a member for several years [1813–21], during which time I have nothing to remember but the most agreeable incidents.’

The Duke of Wellington was an early supporter of service clubs. Club bust of the Duke of Wellington in old age by Matthew Noble (1818–76), sculptor of the celebrated Wellington Monument in Manchester in 1856.

That was exactly the tone desired by the patrons of London’s first military clubs—these were not to be places of licentiousness and scandal. But not everyone was enthusiastic about Lord Lynedoch’s proposal of a club for all service officers. When he wished to extend it to naval officers, he approached Admiral of the Fleet John Jervis, Earl of St Vincent, for his support but he got a stern rebuke from him. The hero of the naval victory at Cape St Vincent ‘entirely disapproved of the system, as tending to create a military influence in the country, pregnant with danger to our civil rights and liberties’.

The Times picked up on this dispute, leading with a column drawing attention to ‘the terror which has sprung up respecting the club of officers’. The article, published on 28 February 1816, declared, ‘It is a legitimate and wholesome terror: no man, who has ever turned over the history of this or any other country, can view a military combination of such a kind, and at such a time, without alarm.’ The Times harked back to the tumultuous period in the 17th century when gatherings of officers could lead to a coup d’état. The newspaper agreed with the Earl of St Vincent that such a club could be unconstitutional and threatening to Parliament.

There was even a debate about it in the House of Commons on 4 March 1816. Members of Parliament argued that elevating military officers into a separate class that belonged to a club that excluded the ‘great mass of people’ was ‘constitutionally dangerous’. Such a club with its royal links would give additional influence to the Crown among those officers who sought royal patronage.

‘Looking to the glorious achievements of members of the Military Club,’ said one defender of the club, he ‘thought it unjust to hold them up to the world in the odious light of oppressors of a free people, and subverters of the happy constitution of Great Britain.’ The gentleman sat down to a chorus of ‘Hear! Hear!’ from other MPs, but poor old Lord Lynedoch. He was mortified. He was just trying to create a comfortable haven for soldiers so they didn’t get wildly drunk in the city and now the leading newspaper of the land and MPs were accusing him of fomenting a military conspiracy against the government!

By the time Lord Lynedoch became embroiled in this constitutional controversy, the Military Club had already been established a year and claimed 1,500 members. It would later become known as the United Service Club. With a building designed by John Nash in the neo-classical style in the 1820s, it stood at 116 Pall Mall and attracted Army and Navy officers above the rank of major or commander and, for this reason, earned the nickname of ‘the Senior’.

The need for a military club with broader membership for lower commissioned ranks was met by the Army and Navy Club in 1837. Its founder had originally wanted just Army officers, but the Duke of Wellington refused to become involved unless the club was also open to officers of the Royal Navy and Royal Marines. Its grand clubhouse, opened in 1851, was an Italian palazzo-style building on Pall Mall with a frontage onto St James’s Square. The club became informally known as ‘the Rag’ following a comment made by an early member. Returning to the club after an evening at the ‘Rag and Famish’, a disreputable gambling house noted for its poor eating, the hungry member called the Army and Navy’s spartan menu a ‘rag and famish affair’. The insult stuck.

Telescope used by Field Marshal the Marquis of Anglesey on the battlefield of Waterloo in 1815 and presented to his son, Alfred. One of the treasures of the Naval and Military Club, it was originally donated to the United Service Club in 1902 and passed on to the In & Out when the clubs amalgamated.

The popularity of the Senior and the Rag encouraged the establishment of other clubs in St James’s, but not all of them met with success. The Military, Naval and County Service Club lasted for less than three years after opening its doors at 50 St James’s Street in November 1848. Aimed at officers of the militia, yeomanry and East India Company’s service, it closed in 1851 with debts of £18,000. A notice of auction described its building as a mansion that ‘in point of situation, style, and extent is one of the most perfect clubhouses in the metropolis, admirably adapted as a pains de reception for any illustrious personage, or as a grand maison de reception for distinguished foreigners of all nations during the ensuing season’. The establishment was described as in perfect ‘ornamental repair’ and was going for sale complete with ‘services of china, glass, plate, linen, batterie de cuisine’. The building later housed the Devonshire Club for over a century until 1976.

Principal drawing room of the short-lived Military, Naval and County Service Club in St James’s Street, which closed in 1851 with debts of £18,000. Not every service club established in the Victorian era was a success. (Peter Newark’s Pictures)

A Junior United Service Club was opened at Charles II Street, off Regent Street, in an elegant palazzo-style building, which boasted 2,000 members in the early 1860s paying a £30 entrance fee and an annual subscription of £6 6s. It was open to all officer ranks down to second lieutenants in the Army and midshipmen in the Navy.

Despite the occasional failure, such was the demand for joining a military club in central London that officers found it increasingly difficult to be accepted by any of the existing clubs—their waiting lists were just too long.

FOUNDING THE NAVAL AND MILITARY

When three officers from the Royal East Kent Regiment, known as The Buffs, returned from overseas service in Hong Kong, they were stationed at the Tower of London. Wanting to mix with fellow officers in the capital, they were disappointed to realise how impossible it was to get into any of the established military clubs.

These three officers were Major W. H. Cairnes, Captain W. Stewart and Lieutenant F. T. Jones. They were joined in their exasperation by Captain Lionel Barber of the Royal Engineers, also garrisoned at the Tower. He was in a worse position because Royal Engineers officers at the time were not regarded as of the same status as officers of infantry, cavalry and artillery regiments, and so it was even more unlikely he would be elected to join a service club, even if the membership lists were open. His cousin, Henry Barber, who had been a subaltern in the 17th Lancers and seen action at Sevastopol during the Crimean War, shared their frustration and together they decided to establish a new association—the Naval and Military Club. It is thought likely that it was Henry Barber who helped provide the finance for the officers to rent their first accommodation in Mayfair.

The opening page of the Minutes for the first meeting of the Club on 18 March 1862 records ‘The annual payment of Members was fixed, for the present, at five Guineas, and for Officers, absent on service, out of the United Kingdom, at Ten Shillings only.’ The entrance fee was initially set at 15 guineas but this was raised soon after to 40 guineas and the subscription for officers based in the UK went up to eight guineas. Their members rose quickly from 100 to 150, making the project economically viable. A series of announcements in The Times in June 1862 indicate that they had temporary offices in Carlton Chambers, Regent Street, before moving to 27b Old Bond Street, where prospectuses and information on the new club could be obtained from the Secretary.

The first clubhouse was at 18 Clifford Street, a Georgian townhouse, on the corner with Old Burlington Street. Barely changed in its appearance from when it was first built in 1723, it is a substantial house with five red-brick-framed windows across its facade and four floors above the basement. It now houses Buck's Club, which moved into it in 1919. The Naval and Military leased the building for a year from September 1862 but it became clear it was too small for the growing membership and the search was on for a larger space. In the meantime, however, the Clifford Street premises gained a little notoriety.

The first home of the Naval and Military Club in 1862 was a Georgian townhouse at 18 Clifford Street in Mayfair. The building now houses Buck’s Club, established in 1919.

In June 1863, some young officers set off from the clubhouse for some fun at the Cremorne Gardens, an outdoor tavern across the river from the more famous pleasure gardens in Vauxhall. The jolly atmosphere turned sour and a fight broke out, with several young officers arrested. It apparently started when a civilian strode into a bar with his sleeves rolled up saying one of the soldiers had insulted his wife. There was a lot of pushing and shoving, with one officer heard to say he would ‘fight a dozen’. The police then intervened, wielding their truncheons, and the melee turned into a riot. In the court case that ensued, one of the officers involved turned out to be a member of the Naval and Military Club, as a witness testified in court.

‘I dined with Mr Saville [one of the accused] at the Naval and Military Club, in Clifford-street,’ said a lieutenant of the 88th Connaught Rangers. ‘At 11 o’clock we left the club.’ They then proceeded to the Cremorne Gardens where Saville, an ensign in the 34th Regiment, was arrested. ‘He never was out of my company the whole time,’ insisted the Connaught Ranger, ‘or in any way, shape or kind created any disturbance. He was quite sober.’

The second home of the Naval and Military Club was another Georgian townhouse at 22 Hanover Square, also in Mayfair. It has since been demolished but the neighbouring surviving building at 24 Hanover Square gives an idea of what it looked like. The Club was there for two years before its growing membership necessitated a further move. (Peter Newark’s Pictures)

The ensign may well have been innocently caught up in the drunken fighting, but it was just this kind of trouble that the establishment of Lord Lynedoch’s military club was meant to avoid!

By the end of 1863, the Naval and Military Club had moved to 22 Hanover Square, an elegant red-brick early Georgian townhouse built around 1715, when the square was originally laid out. The clubhouse has now disappeared beneath a modern office block that towers over its neighbours on the south-west corner of the square, but an idea of its appearance can be gained by looking at 24 Hanover Square, one of the few original townhouses in the square to have survived, with its classical pilaster-framed entrance and three tall sash windows on the first floor, each surmounted with a fan of vertical bands of red brick. These houses were originally inhabited by ‘persons of distinction’. The Club remained in Hanover Square until the end of 1865, when its increasing membership—around 600—again necessitated a move to larger premises.

A newspaper advert in February 1865 announced that the Club was looking for a clubhouse ‘in the neighbourhood of St James’s Street… or a site on which to build one’. Clearly, its membership wanted to be based in traditional clubland, but it was not to be and when the Club Secretary was informed by letter of a lease becoming available in Piccadilly, he probably couldn’t believe his eyes. It was one of the most famous buildings in the West End.

For over a century, 94 Piccadilly had been at the heart of London high society. One of the few detached private mansion houses in central London, it was originally built for Lord Egremont between 1756–60. The architect, Matthew Brettingham, was noted for his neo-classical country houses, most notably Holkham Hall in Norfolk, and he brought his considerable Italianate style to the palatial building, setting it back from the road with a courtyard in front for carriages to arrive and depart. It had three main storeys, was faced with Portland stone, had a central bay featuring a Venetian window on the first floor and surmounted by a central pediment, giving the whole the appearance of a north Italian Palladian villa, the height of architectural style at the time. Inside, the principal reception rooms with the highest ceilings were on the first floor leading out onto a balcony overlooking Piccadilly and Green Park.

Lord Egremont, Secretary of State during the Seven Years War, barely had time to enjoy his Piccadilly palace before he passed away in 1763. The next notable inhabitant of No 94 was the Marquess of Cholmondeley. He was followed by Prince Adolphus, Duke of Cambridge, the seventh son of George III. Commander-in-Chief of the King’s German Legion from 1803 onwards—consisting of expatriate Germans fighting against the French during the Napoleonic Wars—the Duke of Cambridge became a field marshal in 1813. Because of his royal connection, his mansion in Piccadilly became known as Cambridge House, as it still is today.

Officers of The Buffs and The Royals. It was three members of The Buffs who helped found the Naval and Military Club in 1862. This illustration, hanging in the Club, is one of a set of 14 watercolours of various regiments in full dress uniform by Orlando Norie (1832–1901), the noted Victorian military artist.

It was in its front courtyard one evening on 27 June 1850 that Queen Victoria was assaulted after visiting her dying uncle. Her carriage was turning into Piccadilly when a tall former Army officer of the 10th Light Dragoons lunged at the open carriage with a brass-topped cane and struck the Queen sharply on her forehead, giving her a nasty gash. The man was wrestled to the ground and later sentenced to seven years’ transportation to Australia. Despite a prominent bruise and bleeding from the wound, the Queen continued on to her engagement at the opera that evening to great applause. The Duke died shortly afterwards and the building was then advertised in April 1856 as a ‘noble mansion’ to be let unfurnished.

Cambridge House next became the home of Lord Palmerston, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1859 to 1865. During his residency it became the summit of London society, its elegant rooms hosting many illustrious gatherings of Victorian politicians and luminaries, foreign royalty and diplomats. Full dress parliamentary banquets were given there, as were more pleasurable soirées. A little indication of the fashionable fun is given by a contemporary newspaper report of a dinner party followed by dancing held in Cambridge House by the Palmerstons in honour of the Prince and Princess of Wales in June 1864.

Club portrait of Alicia Maria Carpenter, 2nd Countess of Egremont, wife of the original resident of Cambridge House in the middle of the 18th century.

‘The ballroom was brilliantly illuminated, and handsomely decorated with a profusion of flowers,’ commented the report. Among the notables in attendance, aside from a formidable array of British and foreign aristocracy, were the then Chancellor of the Exchequer and future Prime Minister William Gladstone, Sir Robert Peel, son of the former Prime Minister and a prominent politician in his own right, Sir Charles Russell, recipient of the Victoria Cross (VC) for his acts at the battle of Inkerman, and several members of the Rothschild banking dynasty, who lived in a mansion nearby. The dancing commenced at 11.00pm with a supper served in the early hours. ‘Five circular tables were appropriated for the supper,’ said the report, ‘the Royal table, laid for a party of 18, being in the centre of the [dining] room. It was decorated with beautiful fruit and flowers, and lighted by gilt chandeliers.’

When Queen Mary visited the Club in 1934, she donated a short history of Cambridge House written by the Dowager Lady Airlie, a great-granddaughter of Lord and Lady Palmerston. In the handwritten notes, the Dowager recalls what life was like when the Palmerstons lived there.

Home of the United Service Club—‘the Senior’—the first great military service club in London. It is now the headquarters of the Institute of Directors.

‘The wall which separated the property from Piccadilly had only one gate,’ she writes, ‘and as this would have been very inconvenient for Lady Palmerston’s parties, the two entrances were arranged as they now stand.’ Thus, the famous In & Out gateposts were born, but they were the reverse of what they later became. One suggestion is that this suited Palmerston’s carriage so it could drive straight through the Out gate to the stable entrance round the corner in Whitehorse Street.

Although the rooms were very grand, there were not a lot of them and Lady Palmerston fretted about people coming to stay, as there might not be enough rooms to entertain them in.

‘The dressing room and Lady Palmerston’s bedroom were on the first floor as was her dressing room,’ remembers Lady Airlie. ‘The walls of the dressing rooms were hung, and the furniture was upholstered, with a primrose rep silk with satin stripe.’

When her father married Palmerston’s granddaughter in 1865 they had their wedding breakfast at Cambridge House. Lady Airlie would later visit the building with her family.

‘As a little child in that house I remember crying,’ she writes, ‘and hiding from the black man, and the little black boy, and being told as they came through the room, that it was only the sweep who had brought the little boy to go up the chimney for him.’

When Palmerston died in October 1865, his body lay at Cambridge House before his funeral procession departed for Westminster Abbey. At the end of that year, the Naval and Military Club achieved something of a social coup by acquiring the lease to such a celebrated building from the freeholder, the trustees of the late Sir Richard Sutton, and opened the doors of Cambridge House to Club members on 2 March 1866. It undoubtedly helped raise the status of the institution as one of the great clubs of London. Membership passed the 1,000 mark. The arrival of the Club at such a prestigious address was noted by The Times eight months later when thousands of supporters of the Reform League—in favour of electoral reform—marched along Piccadilly towards Hyde Park, passing the clubhouse.

‘At Cambridge-house the members of the Naval and Military Club, by which it is occupied,’ observed The Times, ‘appeared at the balcony to watch the procession, while some members of the procession, perhaps, wondered whether, if the great and lamented statesman had been spared to us whose memory will be reverentially associated with Cambridge-house, the present demonstration would have been necessary or possible.’

Lord Palmerston, Prime Minister of Great Britain from 1859 to 1865. When he lived at Cambridge House it became a centre of Victorian high society and one of the most famous addresses in London. Club bust by Matthew Noble, mid-19th century.

Cambridge House at 94 Piccadilly in 1860 when it was the residence of Lord Palmerston. The Palladian mansion was originally built for Lord Egremont between 1756 and 1760. The Naval and Military Club arrived in 1866.